Alternate Universe In Which Helen is a Far-Right Lesbian Wingnut & The Family W/ Quintuplets Makes Sense

 FRIENDS,

The world is a steaming shithole of death & I’m not even gonna try to accentuate the positive right now. I’m going to gaze & wallow around the abyss until it doesn’t hurt so much, until I can make out some recognizable shapes in the darkness. 

I can barely believe that a racially motivated mass murder was followed so closely by the first elementerty school shooting since Newtown.

This conflagration of human atrocity reminds me that not long ago I went on a psychic adventure that was fueled by drugs & a philosophical text, which was also powered by singing & automatic writing, and which eventually led me to the part of the adventure that I haven’t really talked about (except a little bit in the automatic writing portion).

I will say that once the psychic adventure took off & I felt I was in communicado with the spirit realm, a lot of my healing focus went toward gun violence in schools. I know there is gun violence , well, everywhere now… but it was violence in schools that particularly saddened me. And I know this will be controversial to say, but my main interest & concern is for the shooter. I don’t mean sympathy, empathy or compassion for the shooter, just…interest. Concern.

And I totally get the “not glorifying” by repeating the shooter’s name & burying the victims under all the speculative psychology & gory fascination with the person who did the crime. But I also believe that not looking into the abyss of the shooter solves nothing.

I’ve given up on gun laws. Or doing anything about this through our cumbersome legal system. It will have to be something else…like a pandemic that keeps our children home from school forever. To believe for a moment this was the solution… I was fine with it.  Yeah, I know that is controversial too.

Anyway…I try to keep my interest in school shooters on the down low. I’m not proud of it. But I also understand where it comes from — my boyfriend in 12th grade was most-likely-to-be -the-school-shooter. Most of you are familiar with my backstory but in summary, I was in a terribly abusive relationship where this boy wished to control me so badly that one night he resorted to holding me at gunpoint in his grandmother’s house for hours.

Years later…in fact recently…my brother told me he had this same boy as a lab partner in science & one day he made a point to show my brother the gun in his waistband. So the gun made it onto school property & this was most likely around the time I was dating this kid. And it was just a simple pistol type weapon. The kind of “gun” we were content to defend ourselves with in the 1980s.

I can’t imagine having to fear an AR-15 at school. Except…I can. I go to the grocery store. I go to the McDonald’s. I go outside my house. School shootings have morphed into anywhere shootings & nothing has been done.  [Don’t rattle off a list of mental health checks & waiting periods. Fuck that. That IS nothing.]

All right. I have no more words. Words, words, words, what are they good for…huh…absoloutely nothin’

I like the way you work it…no diggity …i got to bag it up

All Along the WatchTower! and her sullen & aborted currents breed

                                  new age monsters

              True Thinking is dead

Awkward video, and the first suicide is molested

  Groin furiously pumping its stiff pink gallop

              Poise! Underwear paws!

Carefully barricaded & shot up by a psychopath nonetheless!

Words, I have no more.

Here are some words from the automatic portions of the psychic safari:

DELTA

VACCINE

OMICRON

JEOPARDY

MAYIM BIALIK

********

Dot Family Mom (Devya), big sister Jade, Dad (Jack)

Please do your best to enjoy this art. I am so happy to be reunited with my quintuplet family. Speaking of psychic safaris — there is a pretty severe backlash that comes with it. My quintuplet cartoon family helped me through some of it, but I lost touch with them when I had adverse reaction to my meds in 2021. Then we moved & such…so I didn’t have much time to spend with them. But I think they will be having addventures all year long.

Dare To Dot (Quintillism, yo)

 HEY FRIENDS,

Have an iceberg.

It is the last in my experimental installment of ice portraits.

What I’ve learned is, it is hard for me to tone down my tendency

to enliven the page with color, to saturate

the world with dots densely…. to create these sublime, borealis-type

colors w/out spoiling the white space…  that was indeed the challenge…

and I didn’t seem to meet it 100 per%cent,

but I am better informed than I was before… so i am pleased anyway.

Hi. There. Friends. I know I promised — at New Year’s star-like apex —

that I would post at least one blog-per-month for your feasting, drooling

eyes,

but, , , , , l ,   I…. I…may not be able to deliver on that. I’ll try still. But

but but but but

you know…  I may have to take a mental health month once in awhile,

such as May 2022. When I return, it will be with dots of my

quintuplet family, whose last name I’ve decided is Khan-Dare (yes,

a hyphenate) and upon seeing it typed, looks so much like Kardashian, 

it makes me sad

on a sadderday…no less)

Okay…what else is new? Spring here in the Middle-West United-States

is progressing as mother nature intended…with little white blossoms

giving way to green stumps, which twist into

real leaves as if branches are the original 3D printer we all wish we owned…

W/ bull dozers razing the public library & instead of an ice skating rink

constructing a tacky apartment so unlike a toy village it makes me 

insane the day before Easter…

no bunnies in the yard yet, but BUT… BIRDS in the laundry hose!!!

BIRDS, clogging our dryer with twiglets & egglets & wing tips & goo

We cleaned their kindling kindly & no one died, though someone

may have been orphaned…I don’t know yet…

I hope the resurrection brings you shade & by that

I do not mean

the snidery of frenemies, but the cool relief 

of the pill after days on the cross (made by Stryker), by the 

spritz of consciousness when you faint on the 

eroticon dance floor, & no one bids on your body

at auction…  I will come out as an autoandrophile

when the rabbit leaves…

iceberg lettuce…

pray.

A SAPLING DIES IN ST PETE

 Hello Fellow Time Travelers,

I think it’s been a cruel & unusually long time since I last said hello. I had to go underground after my exhaustive expose on transness. Then the world fully erupted in an imperilaistic shitstorm & I just couldn’t. Even.

 

Here in Jasper it has been a wonderful couple of winter months. I’ve spent them like a hermit in the attic writing, arting and watching snowflakes from a safe distance.

I hope you e-joy the new art, inspired by frozen water & the Olympics. And I hope you n-joy the short story, not quite an Adventure in Reality but a fictionalized dreamscape.

A SAPLING DIES IN ST PETE

I was traveling with Pixel—my 10-toed, 11-lived cat—down the shady charcoal streets of the subconscious. Our ambiguous vehicle had run out of fuel or otherwise left us inconvenienced and we were walking.

I was walking. Pixel was being carried, and talked to, by me.

I was telling Pixel about Alice, and her disconcerting adventure in a land much more colorful than this one.

So imagine how disconcerted I am by all this neutral, Pixel seemed to be saying with his tail swishes & kitten-chirps.

I remembered calling some relatives & acquaintances when our vehicle first bit the dust. No one could help us out. Everyone’s life was in absolute shambles, with no extra wiggle-time for a friend’s emergency. I was okay with walking though. That is, until all the grey. It made me feel tired. It had the same effect as the scent of poppies in another little girl’s adventure.

I told Pixel the most surreal thing in this whole story — “I think I’ll try calling my dad.”

Pixel laughed but said go ahead. Beware your expectations.

Olympic speed skaters

I called my dad on some unfamiliar device & moments later he drove up beside us in his smoky van. Always a van! Standard vans, maxi vans, vans in polite neutral tans & neighborly grey-greens, but also neon red & keylime vans, and once the most perverse color van — pure white.

Omg, I texted breathlessly with my oral device as I ran alongside the van & managed to vault my worldly hoard of possessions & pets into the front seat Thank you for showing up for me at this, of all times!

No problem, my dad seemed to say, though I don’t think he really said it. Instead, he was talking about his bridge game from the year I turned eleven. Right where we left off.

And so I threw two aces on the table and this idiot bids a four no trump! Can you believe that? Some people just aren’t willing to risk anything…

Yeah, I said, people suck. So you probably want directions to my —

Oh I thought you could come to my place! See where I’m living now. It’s new, I think you’ll really like it.

Oh I’d rather just get h—

Nonsense. You’re coming to my place. You’ll love it.

Okay. Where’s your place?

St Pete.

Florida?

Florida-ish.

Do you mean Russia??

Well…kind of.

Oh boy, I snighed sighily. Buckle in, I told Pixel, we’re in for a long ride.

And it was a long ride. Luckily my dad talked the whole way. Especially about bridge, especially when we went over the Atlantic Ocean on the Skyway Bridge.

I don’t know how many days we drove, but it could’ve been weeks. Pixel was good — he didn’t meow a lot or poo on the floorboards, though I knew he wanted to. Hell, I wanted to. I was disarmed by the militant grey landscape. The unglinting knives of the coldest oceans & seas known to man. The moldy-toned atmosphere. The eons of concrete pouring itself under our wheels as the smoky van rolled ever closer to its destination.

Finally we were in Russia. A grey & foreboding place. We parked behind a cheap motel. Here we are! my dad declared proudly.

This? I thought, We drove all those weeks for this?

Erin Jackson — Olympic speed skater

Let me show you around! my dad led me & Pixel to the back entrance of the motel. We were immediately treated to torn velvet wallpaper, worn sooty carpeting, a flickering fire hazard of a light fixture. My dad opened a door with an old-school key and gestured us in. 

Well, this is my home! What do you think?

I glanced around the bland room and wondered how my dad got here. Last I remembered, he was a born again Chrixtian living with his big-haired, rouge-encrusted wife in a 5 million sq ft lovenest. He had a few grandchildren of whom he was sinfully proud. He was a repentant sinner though, having relinquished porn and vans altogether at one point. But we had arrived here in a van…and this room smelled unmistakably of smutty VHS tapes. When did my dad make this Albuquerquean dovetail back into his old self?  Just when I wondered if I was taking too long to answer, or worse, saying any of this out loud, my dad asked — 

Hey, do you want to get high?

Now, I always remember my dad with a drink in his hand. Even after his rebirth. He liked things on the rocks. He liked ice. But I never remember him inhaling the vapors of the merciful angels. I definitely didn’t want to take too long to answer —

Yes please, I said

He pulled from his Russian motel armoire a package of pre-rolled St Petersburg Beige. Whole stalks of mediocre marijuana rolled in soviet-era papers. More sapling than spliff.

How do I light this? I asked, laughing good-naturedly so I didn’t seem ungrateful.

You just light it, my dad answered like some cryptic Matthew McConnaughey zenmaster.

I lit the sapling joint. It sizzled & snapped & sparks rained on my ankles & wrists. I sat on one of the ash-colored bedspreads & puffed away, never sure if I was inhaling anything but stale St Petersburg air. I didn’t want to seem greedy so I passed the smoldering bundle of vegetation to my dad. 

He declined You go ahead. I’m going to jump in the shower. I’ve invited some of your relatives over.

Suddenly there was a clamoring of voices and metal outside.

Oh it’s the train! my dad fanboyed, Come on, you’ve gotta see the train! He yanked us outside, Pixel too, and we stood before the most rickety railway tracks I’d ever witnessed. The tracks ran parallel to the back of the motel, and I was frightened to see there was indeed a train perched precariously & lumbering at moderate speeds our way.

As I looked in either direction, I could see that other people had emerged from their homes or offices to greet the train. They leapt into the air and waved. The engineers & conductors & porters waved and hollered back at the humble citizenry of St Pete. I could see they were tossing candy into the crowd and then I saw what everyone was waiting for — the keg cars. Train cars mounted by enormous kegs, and as the cars chugged past, some roughskinned conductors would open the taps and let the barley flow. The eager folks below squawked like baby birds and once their human beaks were filled with the spirit of the train, they did little circular victory dances around each other.

As the keg cars neared my dad and me, I decided I would drink from them. It had been 15 years since I’d had a drop of alcohol, but if ever there was an occasion to jump from the wagon, it was when the beer flowed from a train, right? I opened wide and received the elixir, which I estimated to be a full-bodied ale, bitter and hoppy and a little bit sockish.

I told Pixel no alcohol and he scowl-growled, but obeyed.

Nathan Chen — Olympic figure skater

We stayed until the train disappeared into the graphite night, then hurried back to my dad’s motel room. Our company will be here soon and I still haven’t showered! As he pulled the bathroom door shut, he asked me to please entertain the guests if they arrived before he finished.

And they did. As I sat on one of the ashy beds trying to decide if I felt the least bit drunk or stoned, there was a boisterous knock at the door. I brushed away my insecurities and looked through the peephole at the gaggle of relatives waiting to be admitted into my dad’s tiny motel home. I didn’t recognize any of them, so I flung the door open and peered into each of their faces.

I recognized my Aunt Trudy. Trudy!

Well, hey there, doll-baby. Long time no see. Where’s your dad?

He’s in the shower, but please come in. Make yourselves comfortable. Does anyone get high?

The other relatives — the ones I didn’t recognize — started asking if I was my dad’s daughter,

or if I was his other daughter,

or if I was his son, the one who had the sex change?

I said yes to all their questions, even if I didn’t know, or if one yes contradicted another. Just yes! Yes! yes! Everything affirmative for my mysterious relatives. Most of them seemed to like me, though I saw a couple of stand-offish scowling faces at the back of the room. I attributed those scowls to nerves, to introversion forced out into the cold Russian night for a meeting with a distant, forgotten relative of dubious gender.

My dad was taking awhile in the shower and I’d run out of things to say to these people. So Pixel entertained them by running around the room & hiding behind the curtains.

Such a funny cat! they said

Such a handsome cat!

Such a pussyish cat!

Yes! I said

Finally one of the scowly-faced relatives stepped forward and told me she was my dad’s only daughter. I could be a son, or I could get lost, she told me, brushing her taupe dress of my offensive, germy presence.

Does she always speak in riddles? I asked, looking at these strange relatives, wondering if I had ever known them, or if they were just more of my dad’s empty promises.

Only truths, said the relatives. 

I was suddenly very uncomfortable and wanted to be alone, at home, with my cat and some real smokable weed.

Well, I smiled weakly at them, I really have to get home. Pixel and I have a long walk. It was so good seeing you all again. Tell my dad I said good bye.

I brushed past them, scooping Pixel up on my way out. I grabbed my worldly goods from the van, then trundled off under the carbon skies in search of the Skyway Bridge.

3-20-22

DOT PANDEMIC

Dear fellow plague vectors,

I am a pro at social isolation; how are you doing?

Hang in there; you’ll get used to yourself & all your own quirky charm.  Until then, offer yourself some kombucha and ask yourself some open ended, non threatening questions.  Try not to make yourself feel uncomfortable or scrutinized.  You might get nervous and try to run away from yourself…

If you approach yourself like you are your potential new best friend, who knows what might happen?? A whole new world could open up, OR you could die of the plague anyway…

Friends, my 3 favorite astrologers warned me that I should be more charming & less alarming in 2020, so here is the pretty landscape I ripped up in the Fall & promised to reimagine in the Spring. From memory alone! All I remember is how the sunlight pouring in the window made the couch look. And the mermaid sign. And that we were in Unit #8. 

(extra plague blessings to anyone who can read the T card : )))

I have so many ideas of what I’d like to be doing with all this time. I’m still trying to chap a book of poems. You all do not understand how difficult a chore this is for me. I’m not sure how you guys do it. I could keep submitting my books to contests, or I could patch them together myself (& perhaps include some art!!)  But neither way seems to be happening for me. I am so envious of people who can self edit & present a finite masterpiece.

Plus, I thought I was on a writing hiatus last year. and I was from May to August. But apparently I wrote tons between August & January & I don’t even remember it. Do we call that vacuum-of-consciousness? Yes, let’s.

I have dot fever. Pointillism plague. Stipple syphilus. All I wanna do is make some dots.   

not dots ^^^

Unfortunately, it gives me a headache. But I’m a do it anyway!!!!!!!

Dot cartoons. I have so many cartoons I wanna do… Shelter Cat & Trust Fund Baby (remember them?) I did one episode & it gave me such a headache I never did the next one.

I feel the qabalah in this work & call it 'Delta Jerk'

The Gentoo Emperors!!! There will be more from them I promise. They have so much to say.

And my newest cartoon family The Quintuplets, a group of toddler comediennes doing the publicity circuit.

I also want to revisit my TV show (Singlewood). I have ideas now. And we need ideas during a plague.

Singlewood dots c. 2012

Eeeyore (Tony, Moonchild) is also getting us technically ready to do some kind of broadcast/podcast/talking/laughing thing. He has all the technical skills. I have all the ideas. Together we will fight the negativity of the virus. With our proactive & Syd Barrettish antics.

One More Thing. And this is important, so listen up with your eyes:

I know a (the) lot of you were trying very hard to figure out what offends me. 

Is it WORDS? Nope, I love words. ( even words meant to hurt me don’t in themselves offend me)

Porn? Nope, I like porn a lot now that I’m the next guy. 

Dick jokes? Naw, I like a well crafted dick joke (that’s not a rape joke or a misogynist slur in disguise.) I made a pretty funny dick joke the other day, (you should’ve heard it. Now I’ve forgot it.)

The C word? The B word? The N word? The P word? The x word? The pH word? The brown word? The slang of the 1930s? 

No. What truly offends me on a visceral, splenetic level is:   Rumormongering. Gossip milling. Groupthink. Herd mentality. Mooing. Viral speculation. Fear of self. Camouflaging ones depth w/ a slick surface. Or hiding out in a crowd.

By the by,

    I know which two words offend all of you more than any others and, man….you’re weird : ))) 

i think this is weird too ^^^^^

******************ALSO, I have a serious question

What happens to our deployed troops during this outbreak? Are they quarantined somewhere? What about rogue groups like ISIS? 

Does the war on biology end the war on terror (for now?)

What about all the refugees in Europe, and all the families in cages by our border? What’s being done to to keep them safe?

I don’t hear much about these demographics in all the reports about the spread of the virus & they seem important, ‘mmmkay…I’m looking into it now… 

DOTS!! and Dash

HEY GUYS!!   HEY FRIENDS!!   HEY PEOPLE!!!

After five decades of planeting with you ,You’d think I would know your preferred nouns by now. But I don’t.  You’re still the mystifying organism known as Humanitor. 

But it’s okay—I misclassify myself on occasion too. I’m one of you & though less mysterious than you I’m still not fully solved.

*****

It’s not the New year (new Decade) yet, but I’m desperate for change so I’m going to elasticize a bit

past Thanksgiving to the knowledge that the Internet (and social networking) was the strangest & most magical & also least wholesome experience I could’ve ever imagined in my life;

I think in 2009 I proclaimed Facebook “more enchanting than attending one’s own funeral” and I meant it. it was a blast and it was more entertaining than television, or my real introverted life before the extronet;

for me being alive on the internet was more lively than going to a party in real life. and that’s…not as sad as it sounds, it’s hard to see people having fun in real life when I’d rather be home writing reading singing or just about anything.

So this has been quite an enlightening, evolutionary, revolutionary decade we’ve spent together & I think we’ll look back at it & pat ourselves on the back for being such brave magicians.

The Gentoos perform their own version of The Crying Game

***************** BUT WAIT

I haven’t written enough about being trans here, and I apologize.  When I started this momentous portion of my life, I thought it would be more newsworthy : ))

But my change has not been as drastic as the younger (& same age as me, in fact all other trans guys I’ve seen) and it has puzzled me, and my friends, and my doctors. But I changed more this year than in the first 3 years on T combined. I’m finally at a plateau I can live with without wanting to murder the person in the mirror.  I love my post-post-post modern pubescence!!!!

I never expected to be Aquaman, and yet I felt like him at times this& last year. My T was high then, but it’s high now. I never, never, ever understood the female hormone cycle, no matter how many times I read about it in Cosmo or a doctor explained it w/ charts & all. I just never got which fluid was in the beaker at which time of month. And why it had to affect me so much [??]  I know that’s problematic, but I hope you understand. 

Anyway, I’ve never been good with hormones. They’re like little foreign languages flowing through my endocrine system.

I feel pretty good gender-wise, though.  And that’s something to be Thankful for as we bypass all the turkey talk.

The Gentoo Emperors — Teduardo, IO Pine, Cayden Haydenson, and Susie G (full biographies to come)

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that sometime in 2014 my brain broke and its probably not going to return to the way it was. I’ve adjusted to a different level of foreboding that tells me something absolutely catastrophic is going to happen all the time. It took five years to calibrate my new levels of foreboding w/ PKD-approved reality. But…

…I’m still not sure something catastrophic hasn’t already happened???!!!?? 

Anyway, I tried to fix this many ways, including yoga, fitness, all the healthy stuff that I was told to do by well meaning folks

and then had to feel like a huge failure when I couldn’t live without medication any longer.  (I no longer feel bad about this—I’m old and brains go bad.) I just worry about my liver now. But let’s not start a hypochon-CON.

I’ve had a good life and I know for sure there are enough good people out there, even if I can’t talk to them regularly.

Pixel gets in on the act

THIS YEAR…I did what I’ve wanted to do since 11-8-16. I lost hope in people. I gave up on life. I know, I know…I’m a rich, crazy, asshole who can do something like that…that’s partially true…but a little exaggerated : )) Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend it if you have many real world commitments…it’s a feral adventure…and be sure to have the support of angels (living and other) around you. 

I had to unconsciously face some conscious [biases?/terrors?/glitches?/some of which were not even my own] and that sounds so easy but nothing was labeled and all the pie was in uncharted territory,

the soft innards leaking past the tinfoil...mmmm, pie.

There is no 14-year-old girl here. Nor any mama. Your dumb pie will land on the wall way above my head.                                        

No papa bear eating toast, but there was a jaguar spotted swimming across the channel.

Misuse my words and treat them as you would my torso when you thought it was yours

and it may be funny but I hope it’s also a big load off your…

…..

…..

….

shoulders.  [There are no puns here! Only double thrusts and ironic jabs; so sharpen or grow up]

Muchi gratz to Matt Groening for learnin' me to draw a proper bun!

******************AND THIS!!!

I’ve always known what everyone wants to know (as soon they get away from you & with their friends) is all the sexual stuff.  I encourage everyone to do their own research on the effects of testosterone & estrogen  [freud missed 

the boat when 

he didn’t guess it could flip over]

I was going to do a thing on transitioning bathrooms, but it wasn’t very exciting. I never was a fan of public restrooms, even as a lady. And let me tell you, no matter how strongly you identify as male, the women’s restroom is a luxury you give up when you pass too well as a guy. The lack of privacy is a bit alarming, speaking as a human of either gender who is accustomed to stalls or peeing in a cup in my car : )) But I think the most bizarre bathroom experience was running into my brothers in there at a wedding! I quickly ducked into a stall so I hope it wasn’t as awkward for them, but thank fuck that stall was open : O

Usually men’s restrooms are darker and quieter than women’s. That’s nice. But women’s rooms smell better! That’s about all the bathroom data I could gather. I hope that was entertaining enough for you.

WRONG!!!!!!

With the help of colorful dots, medication and Eeeyore, I feel better than I did when I decided to give up hope on people (March-ish). I think the pendulum will strike a less vertiginous balance, though I’m not sure it’s done swinging in all directions…

…which is to say I’m still 115% for Free Speech. Especially for artists and whistleblowers. I had to wrestle with my own peanut gallery of voices with the question of someone’s right to incite violence using hate speech, after the Australian guy went to NZ and shot up a bunch of Muslims and then claimed prominent world leader DT’s rhetoric as his inspiration,

[ I wish I knew more about clauses and addendums about gagging potential dictators. Did we not clausify this stuff after WW2—what was the verdict on Free Speech then?]

Can he shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it? The only thing I see in my perfectly conscious and wide awake mind is YES.  And that’s not a the Tiptree-approved reality I saw myself growing ripe in.

Anyway, I know there is a faction of free speech activists who defend it just so they can get away w/ promoting their hateful nationalist racist sexist agendas. 

I hope this is not us, Miss Question Mark/

                                 Madame Asterisk!   << misgendering someone else is kinda fun!

************ IN CONCOLLUSION

Are you wondering why I keep talking about the internet and the social networks in the past tense? As if they are something I enjoyed at one time, but not so much here and now?  Well, I’m bout to deliver a premature new years resolution for the whole decade of the 20s — yay The Twenties! Let’s all be Dadaists together (or separately)—

My resolution is to be on the internet less! I’ve gotten down from a steady 77% to a nice comfortable 44%. But I’m gonna crank it all the way down to 11%. 

An 11% internet life is all I can handle from now on : )) and that includes this blog too! 11% Octopus, I hope you understand. I am thrilled to have reconnected & known so many new people (esp writers). But now I shall go have my Syd Barrett years, so don’t be surprised to see a fat old bald guy growing roses in the garden next time you stop by!

************Post Script Re: DOTS

Hey GuyFriendPeoples, you know I don’t do much art that’s pretty. It’s just not what inspires me. But I want you to know I was making the most beautiful dot portrait of the view from our cottage on Siesta Key. It was turning out quite nicely, but…

…the art gods demanded a sacrifice out of the calypso blue   So I ripped up my landscape &

kicked my own ass

& everyone was happy

I will try to recreate the landscape sometime in the Spring. Now is too soon.

***********Post-post Script re: 8

This summer I found out I had an 8th sibling. Along with my 2 natural born sibs, my 2 long lost step-sibs, and my 2 younger adopted sibs, there was a sister born before my parents met in college. It was treated as a huge secret & swept under the rug, but I knew from a young age that my family was a very secretive unit, so I wasn’t surprised to find out five decades later that there were even more secrets than I’d figured out on my own. I haven’t met her yet. But I have no doubt she will be more welcome in our family than I ever was.

And so it goes.